With my newfound hobby of birding, I decided to see how many birds I could spot on my walk around the Shinjuku Gyoen, a large park right next to Shinjuku station. It costs 500 yen to enter, but I think it’s well-worth it, especially if you come during one of the flowering seasons - they have sakura, a rose garden and even a greenhouse too.
First up, there were a lot of large-billed crows making their presence known around the park - battling it out in the trees and cawing quite loudly.
The second easiest bird to spot was the warbling-white-eye or “mejiro” who are busy sucking up the nectar out of the flowering trees.
There was one particular sakura tree that had so many photographers standing around it, hoping to get that classic shot of a sakura together with the mejiro.
And some Mallard ducks by one of the pond - although of course I’ve seen many of these over the course of my life, I hadn’t taken a photo of one for the blog yet.
And also a Little grebe on the water.
Out the middle of the pond, there were a pair of ducks that looked sort of like mallards but not quite? And it turned out that they were Northern Shovelers!
They sort of look like an evil version of the mallard.
There were also lots of small birds flitting about out in the open - I spotted a black-tailed wagtail.
And a dusky thrush.
As well as lots of brown-eared bulbuls high up in trees - they’re actually quite a pretty common bird in Japan, but I haven’t managed to get a proper photo of one yet (this doesn’t quite count as a proper photo, but good enough for now!)
There’s a little pavilion we stood in for a while to get some photos, which turned out to be a pretty good spot.
First we were distracted by a flock of Great tits by the water below.
And then I spotted what was possibly a Varied tit in the trees (alas, I could only get a photo of its orange butt, so I won’t count it for today’s post).
Plus a Pale Thrush.
But then the real exciting bit was when I heard some knocking in the trees.. and spotted a Japanese pygmy woodpecker!
Finally, as we made our way out of the park, I noticed two birds flying in to land on a tree branch. They were at quite a distance, so I couldn’t tell what sort of bird they were but they had a weirdly long tail which drew my eye. The lighting wasn’t too great, but with the naked eye I could just faintly make out that they were possibly green?
And zooming in on the photos, that confirms it! They’re Rose-ringed Parakeets - not a bird native to Japan, but pet birds that escaped in the 1960s and have now established colonies in Tokyo.
In total on this walk, I saw 12 species. Although most of these are quite common, I’ve only just started birding so nearly all of these were new to my list. This is actually a pretty fun hobby.
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